Village Health Partnership

For many women and babies in rural Ethiopia, getting clean, safe, and effective care during pregnancy and childbirth can be incredibly difficult.

Village Health Partnership works to change that.

Access to clean facilities, skilled providers, emergency care, and treatment for complications of childbirth can mean the difference between life and death.

We work with Ethiopian partners to improve the systems of care women need, from clean water and infection prevention to skilled delivery, emergency obstetric and newborn care, and treatment for childbirth injuries.

Our goal is safer motherhood in this underserved part of the world, and we work towards that goal by building a stronger system of care for mothers and babies.

Siz Primary Hospital has made enormous strides towards safer motherhood in recent years. They just hired three new medical specialists, have reliable electricity and water from projects VHP helped make possible, and have become the referral hospital for seven smaller health centers.

They are now striving to make care even more accessible with two new initiatives: a NICU and a Maternity Waiting Area.

Siz’s team recognized that distance isn’t the only reason mothers from remote communities have difficulty staying near the hospital while they wait for delivery. They also need food.

Terefe Keto, CEO of Siz Primary Hospital, wrote to us:

“A woman from a village two hours away cannot stay near a hospital for several days if she has nothing to eat. No food means she goes home.”

To address this need, they are cultivating 11 hectares of hospital land to grow food for mothers staying at the hospital.

They have asked VHP to help build a maternity waiting area, a place where women stay as they await the start of labor and where they can partake of the food the hospital is growing.

“What we need from VHP is the facility. A proper room where a high-risk mother can sleep, eat from our garden, attend antenatal care, consult our specialists, and wait for labour to begin safely inside the hospital.”

We need your help to build this facility, so that leaders at Siz Hospital can keep mothers and newborns alive for years to come. Donate today: https://villagehealthpartnership.org/donate/

“We have the surgeon. We do not have the equipment to finish the job.”

That’s what Terefe Keto, CEO of Siz Primary Hospital, recently shared with us.

Siz now has a General Surgeon who can perform emergency C-sections and other procedures that previously required mothers to be transferred to Mizan.

However, when a newborn is premature or seriously ill, there is still nowhere at Siz for that baby to receive the intensive care they may need. While the mother may be recovering from surgery, her newborn may need additional support to survive. When the right equipment isn’t available, the alternative is loading a tiny newborn into an ambulance for transfer to another hospital.

A NICU would change that.

“A NICU at Siz primary hospital is not an expansion project. It is the missing piece that makes our surgical capacity real. An incubator, a radiant warmer, a neonatal heater, an infusion pump, neonatal beds. That is the list.”

Will you help us equip Siz Primary Hospital to care for newborns alongside their mothers? Donate today: https://villagehealthpartnership.org/donate/

Update from the field in southwestern Ethiopia:

Siz Primary Hospital, in Bench Sheko Zone, is part of the network of healthcare facilities we partner with in southwestern Ethiopia.

They just shared some exciting news with us. Three specialists have joined their team: an obstetrics & gynecology specialist, an internal medicine physician, and a general surgeon.

For years, when a mother’s condition became complicated, providers at Siz had no choice but to transfer her to Mizan. With the new specialists and emergency surgical capacity at Siz, more complicated cases can now be treated there.

But as Siz’s CEO, Terefe Keto, explained to us, this progress has also revealed what’s still missing.

“When our surgeon saves a mother through emergency caesarean section, her newborn sometimes needs intensive care immediately after.”

Currently, Siz doesn’t have the equipment to provide that care. A premature or ill newborn may need to be transferred to another hospital, even while their mother is recovering from surgery.

There’s another challenge too. Mothers who live in remote rural communities may be hesitant to come to the hospital before labor begins if they don’t have a safe place to stay or reliable access to food.

That’s why VHP is working with leadership at Siz toward two important next steps: a NICU and a Maternity Waiting Area.

More from Siz soon.

Investing in nurse-midwife training and mentorship has a ripple effect in the rural communities of southwestern Ethiopia. One well-trained provider is able to provide skilled care for numerous mothers and newborns, and when providers are supported across 10 health facilities, the impacts reaches thousands.

This month, we’ve shared how VHP’s nurse-midwife training program works: regular skill checks, hands-on training, and ongoing mentorship from experienced nurse-midwives Yared Deyas and Lydia Gutema. The goal is to build the skills, confidence, and experience providers need to respond when complications arise.

Maternal healthcare requires an integrated system. Infrastructure, equipment, power, and water all matter. But ultimately, savings lives requires skilled people who have the training and support to put those resources to work.

Meet Lydia Gutema.

Lydia is one of the nurse-midwives leading VHP’s training and mentorship efforts across southwestern Ethiopia.

Every three months, she travels to rural health facilities alongside Yared Deyas to assess nurse-midwives' skills, provide hands-on training and mentor providers working on the front lines of maternal and newborn care.

This year, Lydia was recognized by the Ethiopian Nurse-Midwives Association for her work.

Her work is helping strengthen the skills and confidence of nurse-midwives serving women and newborns in some of Ethiopia’s most remote communities.

We’re proud to partner with Lydia and grateful for her dedication to strengthening maternal and newborn care in rural Ethiopia.

What does ongoing nurse-midwife mentorship actually look like?

Every three months, highly trained nurse-midwives Yared Deyas and Lydia Gutema travel to each of the 10 rural health facilities in VHP's network.

They assess skills critical to safe delivery, including:
- Active management of the third stage of labor
- Management of postpartum hemorrhage and eclampsia
- Neonatal resuscitation

During each assessment, Yared and Lydia identify gaps in nurse-midwives’ skills and provide hands-on training to address those gaps. Then they return again three months later, reinforcing learning and providing additional support where it’s needed.

Improving maternal and newborn care isn't about a single training session. It’s about building skills that last.

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After learning during earlier visits to Ethiopia that rural nurse-midwives needed further education and training, VHP established a skill-check, training, and mentorship program across the 10 health facilities where we are working in southwestern Ethiopia.

Instead of asking rural nurse-midwives to leave their facilities for training, we bring the training to them.

VHP partnered with the Mizan Tepi University Teaching Hospital (MTUTH) and reviewed training materials from JHPIEGO and the World Health Organization (WHO) to develop a curriculum for training and mentoring nurse-midwives.

Every three months, two master nurse-midwives, Yared Deyas and Lydia Gutema, travel to each of the 10 facilities. They assess providers’ skills, identify gaps, provide hands-on training, and offer ongoing mentorship.

The results of each skill check are recorded and tracked over time, helping us understand where skills are improving and where additional support is needed.